The dreaded summer assignment, boring students by holding them hostage inside and not letting them enjoy their time to be free. All the stress of the school year washes away when students leave the building in June, but then students are reintroduced to that stress with projects and extensive work that may not be of interest. The more likely the students are uninterested in the work, the more likely they are to not turn it in, so why not make summer assignments what the students want while introducing the course they are set to take. Summer assignments should be student-designed so those students can take interest in their study and make learning fun.

Nobody in the world wants to wash summer away with book work from the class they don't like. Projects like research papers, essays, and 20+ page packets can drown students for the months they have off. Summer before sophomore year, for my history class we had 2 20+ page packets to "introduce us to the course", when in reality, it was just a few hours a day for weeks of busy work of finding answers in textbooks. Painful summer projects, like my class's history packets, will put a bad taste in the students' mouth before they even step foot on school grounds for the year. Summer assignments have to be short, sweet, and efficient, or they will lose the student, potentially for the entire school year.

Students designing their own summer projects will interest them more in the topic, as well as transform the summer project from a burden to something students want to complete. Students should be able to pick a topic for a standard project, like a short PowerPoint or a poster presentation, where students can go hands on while learning. Those history packets would be much more involving to me if they had to do with the World Wars or Military history, and even more if they involved some sort of project component. Disinterest also causes students to be less likely to complete summer assignments. I know of plenty of students, that just won't turn in the project or assignment if they don't want to do it. Summer of Junior year, my class had an essay to write about a current political issue. Half of the class turned in that assignment on time because they just didn't want to do it or were plainly uninterested. Summer Assignments need to be like those A+ introductions to essays, they need to grab the reader and hook them into the topic early, or in the case of summer assignments, they need to interest the student so they keep going and are hooked for the year.

The only downside to student designed projects is the way of grading and assessing their work. The more freedom students are given within a project, the further projects are going to be from what a rubric wants, which can be a pain for teachers. If you tell students to come up with an experiment and make a presentation on a tri-fold board, you could have one kid coming in with a project about wildlife and one with a project about aerodynamics for a chemistry class, two experiments no where near being on topic. There is a limit to the freedom teachers should give students, but there should be extensive freedom to the students within guidelines.

The only way for a project students like to be made, you have to consult the students. Politicians in democratic governments don't guess what the voters want, they ask what the voters want. If teachers are trying to build something for the students, ask the students, it's simple. If teachers want more interest in a course, better grades, more students willing to work, more participants in class, or better summer projects, the only way to do so is to let the students design the assignment. Students designing the project will make learning fun.